Saturday Evening Post

This has been an eventful roller coaster of a week. If you read the M3 Friday Follies, you got look into just one of the adventures. After a brief recap of a few of the others, Clyde has a Folly to bring you compliments of Verizon. The fans are swirling the cool air. Grab a cuppa and snuggle into a rocker. Let’s talk.

The M3 Blog

Other than the outages heretofore already addressed, M3 is progressing nicely. One piece of the fallout from the outage was my close monitoring of the spiders which index M3. Yes, M3 is on the spankies list for Google and Bing both. Crawls slowed to less than 300 per hour for the first time in…months.

For those of you to whom this is Greek, feel free to skip to the Books news.

After weeks of being crawled more than 500 times per hour, M3 is in the doghouse for being inaccessible twice in one week and for more than four consecutive hours.

As big as M3 is, it is not unusual for more than one spider to work on indexing. It takes a handful of them to comb the more than 650 pages and nearly 900 images on M3. While I continue to retrofit the original posts with my images in place of Zemanta pull-in images, the changes in the old posts are of interest to the spiders. It is a project I hope to complete long before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I am hoping for a surge in post sharing to help traffic get the spiders’ attention. Any help the M3 Readers provide is appreciated.

Books

Flash in the Pan (Fall 2012). All I can say is you are amazing. While I have been missing, the M3 Readers have been some flashing authors! If you have not visited some of the newcomers, you are missing out. With more than 60 entries for this book, we are headed to a substantial body of work when this one goes to press.

It is not too late. There are a number of you who have shown interest in FTP. This is my official invitation and encouragement. Even if you are not willing to post your flash on your own blog, you can still be involved.

Make your flash fit the monthly parameters. Email it to me with a 50 word about me. The about me can be as cheeky or serious as you like…just make sure it is no more than 50 words. If you want your blog or website linked, send me a link.

PS Five of the authors already on the FTP page need to get their about me to me. If you do not know who you are, visit the page and see if your name is there. Hmm.

Mantra for a Muse has picked up two five star reviews. If you missed the new page, stop by and check them out. Many thanks to both Lizzie and Gail for their glowing reviews. I sincerely appreciate all good ink my books are getting.

The autographed copies for the winners of the Goodreads giveaway (which I found horrifically disappointing) will go out on Monday morning: one to Florida and the other to Belgium. It will be the first copy to hit Europe.

And yes, I sunk low enough to ask the little worm why he gave a book he had never seen two stars. I managed not to call him a worm. Still wondering why I did not, but I did not.

Killing Us Softly is in the hands of beta readers. The mixed reviews are not about quality, but about the sheer emotion of the book. One of the most poignant quotes so far:

Can you even write a grocery list that doesn’t put a stranglehold on my feelings and how I look at the world?”

My answer? No, not a folly. Merely a soft,

I hope not.”

If you are not familiar with the 1,000 Zombies Project, take a moment to check out Bryon. I am excited to be working on creating some Zombie flashes for his second book in the series. Be sure to watch the video. Bryon made the Global National news.

Byron will be joining in the Redmund Launch.

Redmund Productions

Yes, I hate coding. However, when one wants a website which does not look it popped out of a cookie cutter template box, one must code. The week has been a mixed bag.

On one hand, the forum is built, clean, promising to be fun. On the other hand, database issues are plaguing it at the moment. I am hoping to have it up and ready for registrations by the end of the month. This will allow for registration, profile building and getting the Redmund crew together to socialize and trade ideas, experience, eyes and more.

The book store is going better than expected. The shell is built. I still need to customize it to erase the portions of the out of the box feel it still has. Regardless of layout success, it will not be available until the week of launch.

The main site is progressing slowly. It had to take a backseat to the M3 issues this week. Overall, I am not as disappointed as I first thought I would be for being behind on my self-imposed timeline. It helps I am ahead personally, which allows me more corporate time.

Right Turn, Clyde!

Right turn, Clyde.

Clyde was ensnared by a corporate technique which got completely under his skin.

We all know of corporate policies which are easily abused. It is possible to do one’s job without having ever been productive. Verizon is a company with many such policies in the customer service department.

One of the most exploited ones is the time in which CSR have to answer emails directed to their various customer satisfaction divisions. Nowhere in the policy does it state the matter should be addressed or resolved.

Non-Service

The number one complaint for companies which provide cellular coverage and Internet access is no service, as was the case with my complaint. To be specific, I lodged a complaint against fading of signal which caused repeated failed downloads of large software purchases necessitating restarts which consequentially chew up my monthly data usage to the tune of an extra two or three gigabytes per month.

In answer to my complaint, I got a non-committal form letter which…well, read for yourself:

Hello Red Dwyer,

Thank you for contacting Verizon Wireless. We greatly value your business and we are committed to provide you the best customer service possible. I am sorry to hear about the difficulties that you have been experiencing with your service. I wanted to send you an email to provide as much information as I can.

I apologize for the frustration you have been having. I was not able to locate your name on the account, and we’ll need the password on the account in order to open it. Once we have this information, we should be able to assist you further.

Most questions regarding your device can be answered by visiting us at (link the where the complaints are [were] made). Simply sign in or register for additional account information.

I hope that this information is helpful to you. However if you need additional assistance, please reply to this email with a daytime number to reach you. You can also give us a call at (CS/sales telephone number) and press option 3 for technical support. You will want to make sure that you are calling from a separate line and that your device is available so that we can assist you further. We appreciate your business and thank you for using Verizon Wireless products and services.”

How many ways does this say: We have no intention of helping you or providing service. Thank you for going away.? Enter my response:

Of all the thoroughly disappointing form letter responses I have ever gotten.

Yes, my email is always written in red and large, as I do all else.

So, my dearest M3 Readers, as the SEP usually does, we have addressed the highlights of how I affect M3 and how it affects me. I hope you are having a restful weekend. Until next time,

~~~~~~~~~~

Is the email response clear? How often are you faced with form letter responses which have nothing whatsoever to do with your query or complaint? Are there any erotica beta readers out there? (Email if you prefer not to be identified in the comments.)

(c) Red Dwyer 2012
Re-Blogging of this or any other post on The M3 Blog
is expressly forbidden. 
Copyright and Privacy Policy available
in The Office.